The invention relates to a roof luggage carrier for motor vehicles with roof railings.
Known roof railings consist of two railing pipes extending longitudinally on either side of the vehicle roof on motor vehicles, in particular on utility vehicles and off-the-road vehicles. These railing pipes are connected fixedly to the roof at the time of manufacture of the vehicle and remain permanently on the vehicle.
The roof railing or the railing pipes serve as a holding device for detachable roof superstructures, in particular for the attachment of transverse girders of a roof luggage carrier. Such a transverse girder extends in a known manner from one railing pipe to the other and is attached by means of detachable clamping devices on the railing pipes and held in place thereon.
A number of clamping and retaining devices are already known. For example, a known clamping and retaining device (De PS 35 10 805) is made in the form of a claw which reaches around the appertaining railing rod in a swivelling motion and can be clamped in place thereon. To make this clamping device an additional, swivelling claw element and elastic deformation of the claw body is required, so that the arrangement becomes expensive.
Another known clamping and retaining device on a transverse roof luggage carrier (De PS 35 16 483) consists of a plurality of clamping elements and retaining screws so that manufacture as well as cost is expensive.
In a simple and known clamping and retaining device (DE PS 31 04 163) only one clamping clip is used which surrounds the railing pipe from below and which can be clamped with a retaining screw capable of being tightened from above through the transverse girder. The retaining screw extends at a right angle in the direction of the transverse girder. In order to prevent theft it can only be covered with a long extension at a front cover at high cost. In addition, the installation on, and the removal of the roof luggage carrier from the roof railing is slow and awkward since the entire clamping clip arrangement must be removed.
In a known attachment arrangement of a roof luggage carrier on a roof railing (DE OS 32 23 216) the transverse carrier is provided with a supporting leg at each end on which a clamping and retaining device is installed. Each supporting leg is in the form of a clamping jaw arrangement which surrounds the railing pipe and can be attached to the railing pipe by means of a retaining screw. The supporting leg is attached from the underside with screws or rivets (FIG. 6). The retaining screw can be covered by a forward cover which can be displaced in the transverse girder by a rather complicated spring arrangement. This roof luggage carrier attachment is also relatively costly in design, manufacture and handling. An adaptation to different railing pipes is not provided.
Based on this state of the art, it is an object of the invention to further develop a roof luggage carrier of this type for motor vehicles with roof railings so that the attachment means can be assembled easily, is of low cost in the manufacture, and is easily handled.